Current Time in Santa Clara, Cuba

Santa Clara stands almost exactly in the middle of Cuba, capital of Villa Clara province, on a gently rolling plain between the north coast and the hills of the Escambray mountains. It lies some two hundred and seventy kilometres east of Havana on the island's main road and rail corridor, a position that has shaped its whole history. The climate is tropical, hot and humid in summer with a rainy season from May to October, and warm and drier during the winter months.

With around a quarter of a million inhabitants, it is the fifth largest city in the country. Its economy combines agriculture and food processing from the surrounding sugar and tobacco lands with light industry, including a well-known household appliance factory, along with education, medicine and a growing tourist trade.

The city was founded in 1689 by families from the coastal town of Remedios who moved inland to escape repeated pirate raids. They settled around a tamarind tree that is still commemorated, and the town grew steadily as a centre of the tobacco and cattle country. By the nineteenth century it was one of the wealthiest provincial capitals in Cuba, and the philanthropist Marta Abreu paid for its theatre, schools, laundries and public lighting, work for which she is honoured with a statue in the main square.

Santa Clara occupies a central place in modern Cuban history. In late December 1958 the last battle of the revolution was fought in its streets, when a column led by Ernesto Che Guevara derailed an armoured troop train and took the city, prompting the collapse of the government within days. The wagons of the train remain where they came off the rails as an open-air monument, and on the western edge of the city stands the vast Che Guevara Memorial, with a bronze statue, a museum of his life and the mausoleum where his remains were placed after being returned from Bolivia in 1997. It is one of the most visited sites in Cuba.

The heart of daily life is Parque Vidal, a broad square with a bandstand, shade trees and constant activity, surrounded by the elegant Teatro La Caridad of 1885, colonial arcades and the provincial museum. A pedestrian boulevard of shops and cafés leads away from it.

Santa Clara has a reputation as the most open and bohemian city in Cuba. The cultural centre known as El Mejunje, housed in a roofless ruin, has for decades hosted rock and trova concerts, children's theatre, drag shows and community events, and is widely regarded as a symbol of tolerance on the island. The city also has a lively rock and alternative music scene.

The Central University Marta Abreu of Las Villas, founded in 1948, is one of Cuba's leading institutions and gives the city a large student population.

The central highway and the main railway line cross here, with an airport nearby serving the Cayo Santa María beach resorts.

Santa Clara is popular for its revolutionary monuments, its theatre and its unusually free-spirited cultural life.